FOREWORD In the fall of 1991 I began a series of sermons on the first several chapters of Leviticus. My decision to preach on an obscure and difficult book (in the morning service, no less!) runs against the grain of contemporary pastoral theory. . . . Early on in my series, in fact, I spent most of one sermon explaining why a study of Leviticus is valuable for Christians. I am convinced that Leviticus is not only valuable but essential to a proper understanding of the New Testament. But anyone who preaches on Leviticus to an American congregation at the end of the twentieth century owes somebody an explanation.
Peter J. Leithart(1)
The Book of Leviticus, more than any other biblical book, has kept readers from getting to the biblical books that follow it. Leviticus calls to mind the old Negro spiritual: "So high, you can't get over it; so low, you can't get under it; so wide you can't get around it." But we should recall the conclusion: "So, hear the word of the Lord." The problem is, Leviticus has to be taken as a unit. It is a very difficult book. Therefore, lots of people quit reading. Some make it through the five types of sacrifice. Others actually get through the consanguinity laws. But not many people finish the book. Many are called, but few are chosen.
Why an Economic Commentary? You may be thinking: "Why should anyone write an economic commentary on the Bible?" My answer: "Because there is no neutrality." This is another way of saying that all knowledge is based on some view of morality, which in turn provides a concept of historical cause and effect. The Bible teaches that God brings positive sanctions in history to those who obey His law (Lev. 26:3-13). Our knowledge advances as we increase both our moral perception of His law and our covenantal obedience to His law. So does our success, long term.
The Bible speaks authoritatively in every area of life. This means that every area of life must be explored and then disciplined in terms of revelation in the Bible. We need specialized commentaries that apply biblical law to specific tasks: our occupations (jobs) and our callings (unique services) before God. As we study the Bible from the perspective of modern academic disciplines, we will increase our knowledge of the Bible and also these academic disciplines. We will gain insights that were unavailable to commentators in earlier eras. That is to say, there is supposed to be intellectual and moral progress in history. (Warning: any widely heralded "biblical world-and-life view" that has not been supported by detailed commentaries on applied theology is either a sham or is in the very early development stage: a slogan rather than a reality.)
The church's knowledge of the Bible is not static. Creeds -- the universal grammar of Christianity -- should be improved over time. So should detailed confessions: the dialects of competing denominations and traditions. So should Bible commentaries. This is why we should expect biblical exegesis to improve as time moves forward. The church will become progressively more alert to the interaction of biblical texts with specialized knowledge in all fields of study, but especially those dealing with man and his institutions. As history advances, our knowledge regarding our personal and corporate responsibilities will increase. With greater knowledge comes greater responsibility (Luke 12:47-48).
This means that the church's knowledge of the Bible cannot remain static. Only by sealing off culture from biblical ethics could the church's knowledge of the Bible become static. This is an impossible goal, for the ethics of the world surrounding an ethically isolated, culturally defensive church eventually makes inroads into the thinking of its members. It is therefore an illegitimate goal. Nevertheless, a sealed-off church and a sealed-off external culture are the twin cultural goals of pietism.(2) Pietists seek to place an exegetical boundary around the arena of Christian responsibility. The smaller this boundary is, the pietist believes, the better.
What this commentary is designed to show is that the church as an institution and Christians as individuals have far more responsibility than Protestant pietistic churches have taught for over four centuries. More to the point, these responsibilities will grow over time. But so will God's grace in history. This is the meaning of progressive sanctification, both personally and corporately.
There are a lot of laws in Leviticus. As in the case of my previous commentaries, I ask two questions of each law that I consider: 1) How was this law applied in ancient Israel? 2) How should it be applied today, if at all? A few commentators ask the first question about a few laws in their chosen biblical books. Hardly anyone since the year 1700 has bothered to ask the second, let alone answer it clearly.
This Book Called Leviticus In a humorous book about psychologically afflicted people who cannot resist buying books, especially used books -- I am one of these people -- the author provides a brief history of what book reviewing might have been like before the invention of the printing press. Here is how he imagines an early book industry report on the sales of Leviticus:
Highly publicized diet book published under the title Leviticus. Sales flop. "Too many rules, too depressing, not enough variety, not enough attention to cholesterol," cry the critics. "And for crying out loud, give it a decent title."(3)
This parody is not too far from the opinion of the average reader who has started but not finished Leviticus. He sees it as a kind of "healthful living" diet book. It isn't.
Then what is Leviticus all about? It is a book about limits: boundaries. There are a lot of boundaries laid down in the Book of Leviticus. Some of these limits are liturgical. Others are familial. Some are tribal. Some are dietary. There are also limits that have to do with the status of the Promised Land as God's holy place of residence. Finally, a lot of them establish economic limits. I have discussed these applications at considerable length, especially the economic ones. That is why this commentary is longer than Tools of Dominion.
I offered several pages of reasons to justify the length of Tools of Dominion in its Introduction. I have adopted what I call a "fat book" strategy. A movement that seeks to change the world cannot make its claims believable with only short books. The world is much too large and much too complex to be capable of being restructured in terms of large-print, thin paperback books -- the only kind of books that most Christians read these days. The best that any movement can expect to achieve if it publishes only short books is to persuade readers that the world cannot be changed. This is why contemporary dispensationalism is limited to short paperback books. Dispensational authors do not expect their readers to be around long enough to wear out paperback books, let alone hardback books. Neither do their readers. That they will not wear out their paperback books is a safe assumption, but it has nothing to do with the timing of Christ's Second Coming. It has everything to do with the reading habits and attention spans of most dispensational readers. A movement based on such reading habits and short attention spans is not going to be dominant indefinitely.(4) It will be replaced.
Applying the Bible's Texts Today The length of this book is, however, more than a strategy for positioning the Christian Reconstruction movement. This book is fat because I am targeting an audience that is not yet in existence. This nonexistent audience is the future leadership of Christianity. At some point, there will be an unprecedented Christian revival. The Holy Spirit will make His worldwide move.(5) Many will be called, and many will be chosen.(6) One of the results of this worldwide revival will be the revival of the ideal of Christendom: the civilization (kingdom) of God in history. Christianity will eventually possess sufficient judicial authority, by means of Christian candidates' popular election to political office and election or their appointment to judicial office, to begin to apply God's Bible-revealed laws to civil government. That victorious generation and the generations that will follow it will need a great deal more than a 200-page commentary. Those future generations will need many commentaries like this one: comprehensive within a specialized field of study. I want this commentary to become a model for those future commentaries in such fields as education, social theory, and political theory. Until such studies exist, and exist in profusion, Christianity will not be taken seriously as a religion with answers to the world's problems. Christianity will continue to be dismissed as simply one more experiment in mystical personal escape and well-organized fund-raising.
A short commentary that offers only conclusions is not going to be taken seriously as a book for restructuring economic theory and practice. Two hundred or so pages of brief conclusions can be dismissed as a list of unsubstantiated speculations. I wrote this large book in order to substantiate my opinions. A commentator should include reasons for his exclusions: why he rejected other possible interpretations and applications. He must show what he believes to be true, but he must also show clearly what he is not saying, so as to avoid confusion after he is dead and gone. This requires large commentaries. Those who are serious about understanding the Bible and applying it to this world require books as large as this one. Those who are not equally serious are not my targeted audience. Besides, such people will not read a book like this anyway.
Boundaries and Dominion does things that normal Bible commentaries seldom do. First, it applies biblical texts to the modern world -- specifically, to economics and law. Second, it cites the opinions of non-Christians who have reached either similar or rival conclusions regarding the judicial issues that Leviticus deals with. Third, it offers examples from history about how societies have enforced or failed to enforce these laws, and what the results were. Fourth, it offers the logic and evidence that led to the conclusions. The reader can evaluate for himself my reasoning process, case law by case law.
The Book of Leviticus is not understood by Christians, not obeyed by Jews, and not taken seriously by anyone else. For example, Christians do not understand the five Levitical sacrifices, Jews do not offer them, and everyone else thinks of them as archaic, barbaric, or both. Then there is the factor of the higher criticism of the Bible, which first began getting a hearing by a handful of New England scholars in the United States in the first half of the 1800's. But interest in higher criticism faded in New England during the Civil War.(7) Then, independent of the moribund New England critical tradition, it revived in the mid-1870's and spread rapidly among German-educated American theologians.(8) Today, most of the very few scholars who pay attention to Leviticus adhere to the interpretive principles of higher criticism. They assume that the Old Testament is the product of several centuries of highly successful forgers.(9) I do not.
But the question remains: How should we interpret this difficult book? Are there principles of interpretation -- a hermeneutic -- that enable us to understand it correctly and apply it to our social problems?
Five Examples
There is more to the texts of Leviticus than meets the eye on first reading, or even second reading. The size of this book indicates just how much more. Let me offer the five Levitical sacrifices as examples. Here are a few one-sentence conclusions stemming from the five Levitical sacrifices.
Whole Burnt Offering. There are limits on man's sacrifice, yet a perfect sacrifice is required. There is no autonomy of possessions. God imposed an economic loss: a sacrifice. God's mercy requires sacrifice on the part of the recipient. There is a hierarchy of debt in life: I owe God; someone owes me; therefore, he owes God. These debt laws remain in force in the New Covenant. Economic theory must begin with the Bible if the State is to be restrained.
Meal Offering. Being a priest adds to a man's responsibility. Authority is hierarchical. Leaven was prohibited on the altar: a symbol of completion in history. Salt was mandatory on the altar: a symbol of permanent destruction.
Peace Offering. The peace offering was the premier boundary offering. Leaven was required. Eating fat was a blessing. Leaven, law, and dominion are linked. The peace offering was not the predecessor of the Lord's Supper. The peace offering was voluntary. The New Covenant is more rigorous than the Old Covenant. Offerings above the tithe are peace offerings.
Sin (Purification) Offering. This sacrifice points to corporate responsibility. Priestly sins are the greatest threat to a biblically covenanted society. Biblical authority is through the people. This sacrifice mandated a theocratic republic. Modern political theory dismisses adultery as politically irrelevant. The church is more important than the State.
Guilt (Reparation) Offering. The tithe is the equivalent of sharecropping. God favors private ownership. The free market pressures producers to count costs. God's economic sanctions are proportional to personal wealth.
I consider many other applications in chapters 1-7. Thirty-one chapters plus 11 appendixes follow these initial seven chapters. This is not the place to summarize all of them, but as in the case of the five Levitical sacrifices, there are many practical applications that follow from these case laws. These applications are not intuitive. People who want to understand ancient Israel must be familiar with these case laws and their applications. So do people who want to be faithful to God today.
A Question of Trust
Because I really do expect some parts of Leviticus to be applied to modern life some day, I could not adopt the standard commentator's implicit assurance to his readers: "Trust me." The stakes are too high. A serious reader of a serious subject should not be asked to take the author's word for anything. This rule applies to Bible commentaries. The author should be expected to spell out in detail both his reasoning and his evidence; conclusions alone are not sufficient. Only if a commentator expects nothing in a biblical text to be applicable in the real world should he expect his readers to trust him.
The problem is not simply that the reader has been asked previously to trust the commentators. He has also been told to distrust the Mosaic law. First, dispensational commentators have argued that the Mosaic law is in a kind of suspended animation until Jesus returns in person to establish His earthly millennial kingdom. This exclusion includes even the Ten Commandments.(10) Second, higher critics of the Bible for over two centuries have argued that the Pentateuch is unreliable judicially because Moses did not really write it; instead, lots of anonymous authors wrote it. Third, Protestant theologians for almost five centuries have denied that the Old Covenant provides moral and judicial standards for personal and corporate sanctification. Fourth, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theologians for a millennium and a half have substituted the legal categories of Greek philosophy, either Platonic (before the eleventh century) or Aristotelian (after the eleventh century in the West), for Old Testament law. Thus, Christians have been told for almost two millennia: "Don't trust the Mosaic law!" So, most Christians do not trust it. Most Christian leaders not only do not trust it; they hate it. They are outraged by it. The Mosaic law is an insult to their sense of justice. They are relieved to learn that Jesus supposedly had nothing to do with it. So, it would be silly for me to say, "Trust me; the theologians are all wrong about the Mosaic law," and then offer a 200-page commentary as evidence. Who would believe me? (Not many of them will believe this fat commentary, but at least it will be more difficult for honest critics to dismiss it as obviously incomplete.)
Short Commentaries and Judicial Relativism There are at least three reasons why we have short Bible commentaries today: 1) modern Christian readers do not read very much, and certainly not long books filled with detailed arguments, let alone footnotes; 2) modern Christian scholars do not expect their conclusions to be applied to society, so they announce their conclusions rather than defend them in detail; and 3) nobody wants the responsibility of applying biblical texts to the contemporary world.
In a time of widespread apostasy and imminent judgment, silence is the preferred stance of God's people: "And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word" (I Ki. 18:21). Why such silence? Because God's covenant people see themselves as outnumbered: "Then said Elijah unto the people, I, even I only, remain a prophet of the LORD; but Baal's prophets are four hundred and fifty men" (I Ki. 18:22). God's people do not like the visible odds, not even prophets. Judicial silence seems safer, though not for prophets. The covenant-keeper asks himself: "Why bring a covenant lawsuit against a majority of voters? It is better to remain silent, even if this means booking passage on a summer cruise to Tarshish."
One result of this outlook is short Bible commentaries. I did not write this commentary to meet the needs of those readers who prefer short commentaries. If Christians are ever to become doers of the word and not hearers only, they need someone to tell them exactly what the word requires them to do, and why. Leviticus tells Christians what they must still be doing.
"That's just your opinion," some critic may respond. Yes, sir, it is indeed my opinion. The far more relevant question readers need to answer is this: Is it also God's opinion? If every controversial statement in this commentary is automatically dismissed as "just one person's opinion," then all controversial opinions in this life are judicially irrelevant. How about this controversial opinion? "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled" (Matt. 5:17-19). Or this one? "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him" (John 3:36). But, as the Pharisees said in effect to Jesus: "That's just your opinion. Who are you to say?" This persuaded them that God's judgment was not coming. But in A.D. 70, judgment came.(11)
Homosexuality and Hermeneutics There can be no doubt that the Bible is absolutely hostile to homosexuality. Jewish author Dennis Prager has minced no words: ". . . my religion not only prohibits homosexuality, it unequivocally, unambiguously, and in the strongest language at its disposal, condemns it."(12) He correctly points to the Bible's absolute break with any conception -- literal or figurative -- of God as a sexual being. "The first thing the Hebrew Bible did was to desexualize God: `In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth' -- by His will, not through any sexual behavior. This was an utterly radical break with all religion, and it alone changed human history. The gods of virtually all civilizations engaged in sexual activity. The gods of Babylon, Canaan, Egypt, Greece, and Rome were, in fact, extremely promiscuous, both with other gods and with mortals."(13) In the case of Egypt, he says, homosexuality with a god was the mark of a man's lack of fear of that god. One Egyptian coffin text reads: "Atum has no power over me, for I copulate between his buttocks."(14) This attitude of defiance -- the professed lack of any fear of God -- is basic to all homosexuality.
Gomes vs. Moses
The New York Times is the most prestigious newspaper in the United States. It is sometimes referred to as America's newspaper of record. This identification is accurate. It is a thick, politically liberal,(15) rhetorically bland,(16) well-indexed newspaper. Its published index may be its primary strength, even more important than its widespread availability on microfilm. Historians become dependent on indexes, and the Times has always provided the best index of any American newspaper. Therefore, historians quote the Times. Therefore, it has become the nation's newspaper of record.
On the page opposite the editorial page -- the famous Op-Ed page -- appear essays by famous and not so famous people, usually liberals. On August 17, 1992, an article by Peter J. Gomes appeared: "Homophobic? Re-Read Your Bible." Gomes is an ordained Baptist minister and a professor of Christian morals at Harvard University, the most prestigious university in the Western hemisphere. He is also minister of the university's Memorial Church.
Within a year of the appearance of his Op-Ed essay, the publishing firm of William Morrow/Avon paid Rev. Gomes a $350,000 advance on royalties to write a book on conservative Christianity's distortions of the Bible. Nine of the largest publishers in the U.S. had bid in a competitive auction for the rights to acquire this as-yet unwritten book.(17) Consider the economics of such a payment. If the book sells for $20, and if Gomes received the standard author's contract of 10 percent of the book's retail price, the publisher will have to sell 175,000 copies -- an unheard of number of copies for an unheard-of academic theologian -- just to get back its advance on royalties, not counting forfeited interest income. To achieve this many sales -- best-seller status -- the publisher will probably have to spend far more on advertising than the author's advance, and even then the book is unlikely to sell 175,000 copies unless the media deliberately subsidize it by giving the author free television time and laudatory book reviews in prominent journals. Either Morrow/Avon was rewarding Rev. Gomes for his opinions or else, like the other publishing houses, the firm expected substantial support from those inside the media who share Rev. Gomes' view of homosexuality, the Bible, and conservative Christianity.
Professor Gomes refers in his essay to various anti-homosexual initiatives on state ballots in 1992. He says that such initiatives are defended by Christians, who appeal to the supposedly clear texts of the Bible that condemn homosexuality. But these Christians have moral blind spots, he implies. "They do not, however, necessarily see quite as clear a meaning in biblical passages on economic conduct, the burdens of wealth and the sin of greed." An intelligent reader knows by now what is coming, and it does.
Gomes says that four biblical passages are customarily cited: Deuteronomy 23:17, I Kings 14:24, I Kings 22:46, and II Kings 23:7. He says that these passages refer to prostitution, not homosexuality. Quite true; this is why these passages are not customarily cited, contrary to Professor Gomes. The passages that are customarily cited are these: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination" (Lev. 18:22). "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them" (Lev. 20:13).
Leviticus: Automatically Dismissed
These two passages present a problem for Professor Gomes. He refers to them in his next paragraph. But he has an answer: they are both in Leviticus, and you know what Ph.D.-holding Harvard theologians think about Leviticus! These two passages "are part of what biblical scholars call the Holiness Code. The code explicitly bans homosexual acts. But it also prohibits eating raw meat, planting two different kinds of seed in the same field and wearing garments with two different kinds of yarn. Tattoos, adultery and sexual intercourse during a woman's menstrual period are similarly outlawed." End of argument. He then goes to the New Testament. Such is the state of theological scholarship today in America's most honored university, founded in 1636 by Calvinist Puritans.
The holiness code is not taken seriously by Professor Gomes as a guide to modern behavior. I think it is safe to say that it is not taken seriously by Harvard University. What is very likely true is that it is not taken seriously by well over nine-tenths of the evangelical Christian community. This is the problem that Boundaries and Dominion seeks to overcome.
Chapters 18 to 20 of Leviticus present the most detailed list of laws in the book. This section forbids sexual contacts between close relatives (18:6-20). Are these laws annulled today? Leviticus prohibits child sacrifice: passing through Molech's fire (18:21). Has this law been annulled because Molech is no longer worshipped? Leviticus prohibits theft and lying (19:11), defrauding a neighbor (19:13), and rendering unjust judgment (19:15). Are these laws also annulled? It prohibits making a prostitute of one's daughter (19:29). It prohibits the mistreatment of resident aliens (19:33-34). It prohibits false weights and measures (19:35-36). It prohibits children from cursing parents (20:9). It prohibits bestiality (20:15-16). Are these, too, merely "holiness code" artifacts?
On what biblical basis can a Christian speak of legitimate civil sanctions against homosexuality if the Book of Leviticus is automatically dismissed? Natural law? But the ancient Greeks accepted the legitimacy of homosexuality with only a few restrictions,(18) yet they (the Hellenistic-era Stoics) invented natural law theory. So, the Christian world has a problem. The average evangelical suspects -- though he is really not quite sure -- that the Bible authorizes civil sanctions against homosexuality. The sanction required by Leviticus is public execution. Already, the evangelical is growing nervous. But if he repudiates the civil sanction established by Leviticus, on what biblical basis can he assert that some other civil penalty should be imposed? By what other standard?(19) If he can lawfully play "pick and choose" from the texts of Leviticus, not to mention the whole of the Mosaic law, then why should he be upset with Professor Gomes? But he is.
Antinomianism: Liberal and Pietist
The evangelical knows there is something wrong with Gomes' arguments. He recognizes Gomes' rhetoric as theologically liberal: "To recover a liberating and inclusive Christ is to be freed from the semantic bondage that makes us curators of a dead culture rather than creatures of a new creation." He knows that he and his beliefs are Gomes' target: "Religious fundamentalism is dangerous because it cannot accept ambiguity and diversity and is therefore inherently intolerant." Such intolerance is "dangerous" and "anti-democratic." Anti-democratic? This begins to sound bad. The evangelical begins to shift in his chair nervously. His discomfort increases when he reads: "The same Bible that the advocates of slavery used to protect their wicked self-interests is the Bible that inspired slaves to revolt and their liberators to action." This is a true statement regarding the history of slavery. How can a Bible-believing Christian explain what seems to be a glaring contradiction on the question of slavery (Lev. 25:44-46)? Yet he knows there is something wrong with this statement:
And the same Bible that on the basis of an archaic social code of ancient Israel and a tortured reading of Paul is used to condemn all homosexuals and homosexual behavior includes metaphors of redemption, renewal, inclusion and love -- principles that invite homosexuals to accept their freedom and responsibility in Christ and demands that their fellow Christians accept them as well.
What can the typical evangelical say in response? He, too, believes that Leviticus promoted "an archaic social code." It also established laws that seem to have been annulled, such as the laws of separating seeds in the same field or avoiding clothing made of both wool and linen. Is the social code of Leviticus inextricably tied to such laws of separation? If so, how can this social code be honored today? If not, how can we separate the still-valid social code from the annulled laws? Gomes puts it well: "The questions are, By what principle of interpretation do we proceed, and by what means do we reconcile `what it meant then' to `what it means now?'" Here he is on target. These are the two absolutely fundamental questions of biblical interpretation (hermeneutics) that I have sought to answer in this commentary and in my previous commentaries. These are the two questions that deliberately have been left unanswered by Protestant commentators on the Old Testament ever since the Reformation. It is time to begin answering both of them.
Let me remind my Bible-affirming readers that these two questions are not intellectual curiosities proposed by academic theologians. If Christians cannot find answers to both of them, then they had better learn to live with (and perhaps die with) AIDS and the new killer strains of drug-resistant tuberculosis that AIDS-carriers also carry.
Michener vs. Moses
On March 30, 1993, best-selling American novelist James Michener followed up on Gomes' essay with a similar one: "God Is Not a Homophobe," which also appeared on the Op-Ed page. This article was published two months after newly inaugurated President Bill Clinton announced his intention, as Commander-in-Chief, to remove all restrictions against homosexuals serving in the military. Michener, like Gomes, cited Leviticus 20:13. He, too, dismissed this law as no longer relevant. He invoked the same line of reasoning: changing times. The Hebrews "lived in a rude, brutal, almost uncivilized place where abominations abounded. To read the list of the things the Jews were enjoined to stop doing is to realize that God had to be unusually strict with such an undisciplined mob." Their society was in "deplorable disarray." He continued: "As order was installed, the extreme penalties advocated in Leviticus were relaxed in the civilized nations that followed. . . . Western society, reacting in its own way, has advanced far beyond the primitive days of Leviticus." Pity the primitive Israelites!
It was the residents of the city-states of Canaan who practiced such abominations, just as the Athenian Greeks would in Plato's era over a millennium later. It was not because Israel was "primitive" that God declared His law and its morally appropriate civil sanction; Israel was not primitive. Israel was God's agent to establish a new civilization in Canaan. God announced this law because He despises homosexuality and homosexuals. He hates the sin and the unrepentant sinner. He does not hate the sin and love the sinner. He hates the sin and hates the sinner. This is why there is a hell: God hates unrepentant sinners. God is indeed a homophobe. He hates the practice and those who practice it, which is why He destroyed Sodom. God warned Israel: practice such an abomination, and the land will vomit you out, just as it vomited out its former inhabitants (Lev. 18:24-29). But modern God-haters pay no attention to the written text of God's revelation, except to ridicule it or reinterpret it to confirm their immoral ways. God's revealed law is irrelevant in modern times, they insist. But they have an escalating problem: AIDS is not irrelevant.
Michener goes on: "So when zealots remind us that the Bible says male homosexuals should be put to death rather than be admitted to the armed forces, it is proper to reply: `You are correct that Leviticus says that. But it also has an enormous number of edicts, which have had to be modified as we became civilized.'" Here we see cultural relativism applied to ethics: a form of social evolutionism. But is Michener's line of reasoning different in principle from the arguments of Christian antinomians who dismiss the laws of Leviticus with an almost equally intense hatred? Is his hermeneutic fundamentally different from theirs? More to the point, is his hermeneutic fundamentally different from yours?
Dispensationalism's Dilemma: Bahnsen or Gomes? Dispensational scholars John and Paul Feinberg have issued a hermeneutical challenge: "The evangelical must decide which rules as stated in Scripture apply to our own day, and he must know how to decide which apply."(20) They are correct; the evangelical is morally bound to do this. He will resist doing this as long as he can, however. Evangelicals sense where such questions lead: toward self-conscious antinomianism, or self-conscious compromise with humanism, or self-conscious theonomy. The more socially relevant they want to be, the more the first choice is closed to them. They do not want to join dispensational author Dave Hunt in a spiritual and intellectual campground for Protestant pietists and mystics.(21)
As dispensationalists, the Feinbergs deny any mandatory judicial continuity between the Old Testament's civil law and today, since New Testament life "is not life under a theocracy."(22) This is the most important statement for social ethics that any anti-theonomic Christian can assert. But until it is proven exegetically, it remains only an assertion. I ask: Would any Christian assert the same anti-theocratic(23) thesis with respect to the family covenant under God and the church covenant under God? If not, then on what judicial basis is such a statement correct regarding the civil covenant under God? An appeal to Western history since, say, 1788 (U.S.) or 1789 (France), begs the judicial question. What must be proven is their assertion that the New Testament "assumes that believers will be under the political rule of non-believing rulers. . . ."(24) That the New Testament makes provision for such a calamity there can be no doubt; but what is the evidence that Jesus and the New Testament authors assumed that this is an eschatologically permanent condition throughout history? Where is it implied in Scripture that Nero's Rome -- or Julian the Apostate's -- is inevitable eschatologically and therefore binding judicially (or vice versa), whereas Constantine's Rome -- or Theodosius' -- is a departure from New Testament judicial standards? Why should Calvin's Geneva be dismissed as a covenantal deviation in civil government? Is Stalin's Russia to be accepted on principle as having conformed far closer than Calvin's Geneva to the covenantally binding New Testament standard with respect to its official source of civil law? These are not merely rhetorical questions. They deserve straightforward answers, but I do not think I will see any straightforward answers in the books and journals of Christian political pluralists.(25)
The Feinbergs argue: "It is inconsistent to say the Church is governed by the New Covenant when it comes to salvation, but by the Mosaic Code (and Covenant) when it comes to law."(26) This is quite true -- as true as it is irrelevant to the theological point they are trying to make. I ask: What Christian theologian, theonomist or otherwise, has ever argued that the Old Covenant had a way of salvation different from the New Covenant? Paul cites Habakkuk 2:4: "The just shall live by faith" (Gal. 3:11b). Lutheran scholar and theologian Robert G. Hoerber has put the issue well: ". . . there is no evidence in the Old Testament or in Judaism that Jews believed that good works merit salvation. . . . The Jews observed the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament in order to belong to God's people, not to earn salvation."(27) The Feinbergs do not acknowledge this view of Old Covenant Judaism. They continue: "A discontinuity position avoids this problem" -- a non-existent, utterly bizarre theological problem of their own invention -- "by claiming that the Church is governed by the New Covenant as to salvation and by the Law of Christ as to law."(28)
Judicial Content
The three-fold ethical problem that a "discontinuity theologian" has to answer (and steadfastly refuses to) is this: 1) show exegetically why, where, and how "the Law of Christ" is different in content from the law of Moses; 2) discuss the biblically binding judicial content of this new law-order; 3) do this without abandoning the very concept of a unique biblical ethics, i.e., without surrendering civil law to covenant-breakers. The Christian world has been waiting patiently since 1830 for a dispensational theologian to write a book on New Testament social ethics -- a book based exclusively on "the Law of Christ." This is a long time to wait. Frankly, I do not think the book is ever going to appear.
The Feinbergs understand their problem: identifying the biblical source of judicial content. Is it in the Old Testament, the New Testament, or both? They assert: "Where the content of the Mosaic Law, for example, and the Law of Christ overlap, appeal to the OT is proper."(29) This appeal to overlapping content is judicially and theologically irrelevant on dispensational terms. There is no reason, given their view of the law, to appeal to Moses if Christ has affirmed a particular law. The Mosaic law is superfluous, dispensationally speaking. It is either annulled or else merely supplemental and non-binding. I ask: Exactly where are these New Testament principles of civil law affirmed and developed in detail comparable to the Mosaic case laws? The Feinbergs know: nowhere.
They repeatedly try to escape this embarrassing problem. For example, they try to identify a New Testament passage that forthrightly affirms capital punishment. They appeal to Romans 13:1-7 (which does not mention capital punishment) and also appeal back to Noah (Gen. 9:5-6).(30) But what, on their presupposition, has Moses got to do with either? Dispensational theologians House and Ice have rejected all appeals to the Mosaic law in search of capital crimes; they appeal solely to the Noachic Covenant. The nations are (they use the present tense) under the Noachic Covenant, not the Mosaic.(31) But the only crime mentioned to Noah was the shedding of human blood. Try to build a civilization on just one civil law. It cannot be done.
Hermeneutics and Abortion
In their desire to become socially relevant dispensationalists -- a self-conscious break with American dispensationalism, 1925 to 1975 -- the Feinbergs cannot let the matter rest here. They want to say something biblically relevant against abortion. They have therefore broken with Dallas Seminary and Talbot Seminary, both of which have remained deathly silent on this topic. They turn to a case law of Exodus to affirm their commitment to the anti-abortion movement. They have a problem: the only place in all the Bible that clearly sets forth a law against abortion is Exodus 21:22-25. So, rather than declare their hostility to abortion based on an unswerving commitment to a Mosaic law, they declare their willingness to accept a Mosaic law because of their hostility to abortion. "For example, nowhere in the NT does one find the specific regulations of Exod 21:22-25 that protect pregnant women and their unborn children. Those ordinances are part of the Mosaic Code but are not part of the NT Law of Christ. On the other hand, as we shall argue when discussing abortion, proper understanding of that passage shows it to be one of the strongest passages of Scripture defending the rights of pregnant women and unborn children. Given that fact, it seems proper to appeal to it as indicating God's attitude toward any kind of harm to the unborn, including abortion. Since nothing in the NT suggests that God's attitude toward the unborn has changed, the OT passage is relevant for determining God's attitude toward the unborn and for demanding protection of them."(32)
They know not what they say. They began this section of their book by rejecting Bahnsen's statement of the theonomic position, namely, "that unless Scripture shows change with respect to OT law, NT era believers should assume it is still in force."(33) Bahnsen does indeed teach this; this is his theonomic hermeneutic: the presumption of judicial continuity. Yet the defend their appeal to a Mosaic case law on this same basis: "Since nothing in the NT suggests that God's attitude toward the unborn has changed, the OT passage is relevant for determining God's attitude toward the unborn and for demanding protection of them." That is to say, they adopt Bahnsen's hermeneutic as the only one that can deliver them, in the name of the Bible, into the camp of the pro-life movement.
Back in 1970, over two years before the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortions on demand, Rushdoony challenged the church to return to Exodus 21:22-25 as the basis of its opposition to abortion. Anything less, he warned, has led in the past to compromises with paganism on this question. He wrote:
Among the earliest battle-lines between the early Christians and the Roman Empire was the matter of abortion, Greek and Roman laws had at times forbidden abortion, even as they had also permitted it. The matter was regarded by these pagan cultures as a question of state policy: if the state wanted births, abortion was a crime against the state; if the state had no desire for the birth of certain children, abortion was either permissible or even required. Because the state represented ultimate order, morality was what the state decreed. To abort or not to abort was thus a question of politics, not of God's law. Plato, for example, held that the state could compel abortion where unapproved parents proceeded without the approval of the state.
Very early, the Christians accused the heathen of murder, holding that abortion is a violation of God's law, "Thou shalt not murder." It was also a violation of the law of Exodus 21:22-25, which held that even accidental abortion was a criminal offense. If a woman with child were accidentally aborted, but no harm followed to either mother or child, even then a fine was mandatory. If the foetus died, then the death penalty was mandatory.
Because the law of the Roman Empire did not regard abortion as a crime, the early church imposed a life sentence as a substitute: penance for life, to indicate that it was a capital offence. The Council of Ancrya, 314 A.D., while making note of this earlier practice, limited the penance to ten years. There were often reversions to the earlier severity, and for a time, in later years, the administration of any draught for purposes of causing an abortion were punishable by death. The Greek and Roman influence tended to weaken the Christian stand by sophisticating the question, by trying to establish when the child or foetus could be considered a living soul. The Biblical law does not raise such questions: at any point, abortion requires the death penalty.(34)
The leaders of conservative Protestant churches in the United States remained prophetically silent when Roe v. Wade was handed down on January 22, 1973. The conservative seminaries also remained silent. (They still remain silent.) When, half a decade later, a few fundamentalist leaders began, very tentatively, to get involved in the pro-life movement, they sought a biblical justification for this move into social activism. This raised a major theological problem, one which none of them is ever forthright enough to admit in public. By acknowledging that Exodus 21:22-25 is the only biblical law prohibiting abortion position, they would have had to admit that Rushdoony had already pre-empted the position because of his view of the continuity of the Mosaic law. They understood that to appeal to Exodus 21:22-25 is to invoke the theonomic hermeneutic. They have generally feared to do this. The Feinbergs are an exception, and the results are intellectually embarrassing.
Today, many Christian anti-abortionists blithely assert that "abortion is murder." We theonomists ask them a question: What is the biblically mandatory civil penalty for murder? They see a terrifying chasm opening up before them. They refuse to combine their pro-capital punishment stance with respect to murder -- a biblically correct connection -- with their rhetoric about abortion's being murder. If they did, they would have to call for legislation demanding the future execution of physicians, nurses, and former mothers who have been lawfully convicted of having participated in an abortion. So, they either remain silent or judicially schizophrenic on this issue. They do not take the Bible's mandated sanctions seriously. They do not even take their own rhetoric seriously. Not surprisingly, the politicians see no need to take them seriously. Abortion continues to be legal.
The self-contradictory hermeneutic of the two Feinbergs is a visible result of the fundamentalists' long-term judicial dilemma. They want judicial continuity when convenient (e.g., anti-abortion), while rejecting judicial continuity when inconvenient (e.g., anti-Bahnsen). They cannot have it both ways. Step by step, fundamentalists and evangelicals are being forced to choose between Bahnsen's hermeneutic and Gomes' hermeneutic. They are willing to do almost anything, such as write theologically befuddled books, to defer this decision.
Conclusion In 1993, Simon & Schuster, a major publishing firm, released an updated version of Ernest Sutherland Bates' 1936 expurgated version of the King James Bible. The text is 1,248 pages long. Approximately two and a quarter pages comprise Leviticus. It is the shortest book in Bates' text until he reaches the minor prophets.
Boundaries and Dominion is longer than Bates' text for the entire Bible. Why should anyone struggle through a book as large as this one? It is not easy reading. It surely was not easy writing. What possible benefits are likely to offset the large investment cost of forfeited time: mine (past) and the reader's (future)?
For most readers, the costs are far higher than the prospective gains. They will not even begin. Few people are sufficiently interested in the Bible to read it cover to cover. Of those who are this interested in the Bible, few are interested in the Old Testament. Of those interested in the Old Testament, few (including pastors) are interested in theology.(35) Of those who are interested in theology, few are interested in biblical law. Of those who are interested in biblical law, few are interested in Mosaic laws that are no longer in force. In this commentary, I show why most of the economic case laws in Leviticus are no longer in force.
Then why spend so much time, space, and money to prove my point in a period of history in which hardly any Christian assumes that any of these laws are still in force? Answer: because Christians need a principle of biblical interpretation to sift through the case laws of the Bible. Without such a sifting principle -- a hermeneutic -- Christians risk falling into one of two disastrous errors: legalism-Phariseeism or antinomianism. A careful study of no other biblical book is better calculated to force Christian interpreters to discover and then apply a principle of biblical judicial interpretation. Leviticus is the hard case, judicially speaking. Get through Leviticus intact, and the other 65 books of the Bible become comparatively smooth sailing.
There is another issue to consider. Some of the laws of Leviticus are still binding. Which ones? This is a difficult question to answer, but Christians need to find the correct answer. This, too, requires a hermeneutic: a consistent, coherent principle of biblical judicial interpretation that enables us to study other books of the Bible and other case laws. A serious Bible commentary on the Mosaic law should instruct the reader on how to do this work of interpretation. Very few commentaries on the Old Testament do this.
There is an old saying: "Give a man a fish, and you have fed him for a day. Teach him to fish, and you have fed him for a lifetime." This principle of feeding always holds true, at least until the fish give out. In biblical interpretation, the fish will never give out. Finite minds will never succeed in exhausting the potential of infinite projects. The work of interpretation and application must go on. It is therefore not sufficient for me to present a series of conclusions. The reader deserves to know how a commentator reached his or her conclusions. This is why Boundaries and Dominion is so large. I show you how I came to my conclusions. Go, thou, and do likewise.
Let me state the obvious: this is a Bible commentary. It is not a treatise on economics. It was written one chapter at a time; it should be read the same way. A commentary is supposed to throw light on specific verses or passages. Because the Book of Leviticus is structured in terms of a unifying concept -- boundaries -- this commentary can be read cover to cover, but most readers will probably confine themselves to specific chapters.(36) In any case, the reader should recall what I wrote about my other large book, Tools of Dominion: you eat an elephant one bite at a time.
This commentary is aimed at economists, who in my day are unlikely to pay any attention. It is aimed at pastors, who rarely read long books, especially on economics. Most of all, it is aimed at intellectually serious Bible students who have not yet decided what their callings in life should be.(37) I hope this book will give them a larger picture of what full-time Christian service really is. They, too, can devote their lives to discovering what God requires from His people, and then try to persuade Christians to believe a word of it -- a seemingly foolish task, indeed, if there were not covenantal sanctions in history. But there are: positive and negative. The positive sanctions are wonderful, but seeking to avoid the negative sanctions is imperative.
I know, I know: that's just my opinion.
Footnotes:
1. Peter J. Leithart, The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 1993), p. ix.
2. J. Gresham Machen, "Christianity and Culture," Princeton Theological Review, XI (1913), pp. 4-5.
3. Tom Raabe, Biblioholism: The Literary Addiction (Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum, 1991), p. 39.
4. Gary North, Rapture Fever: Why Dispensationalism Is Paralyzed (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1993).
5. Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., He Shall Have Dominion: A Postmillennial Eschatology (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1992).
6. Few have been chosen so far over the history of mankind's time on earth; this does not prove that few will be chosen in every generation.
7. Jerry Wayne Brown, The Rise of Biblical Criticism in America, 1800-1870: The New England Scholars (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1969), p. 8.
8. Thomas H. Olbricht, "Rhetoric in the Higher Criticism Controversy," in Paul H. Boase (ed.), The Rhetoric of Protest and Reform, 1878-1898 (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1980), p. 285; Walter F. Petersen, "American Protestantism and the Higher Criticism," Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, L (1961), p. 321.
9. See Appendix J, below: "Conspiracy, Forgery, and Higher Criticism."
10. S. Lewis Johnson, "The Paralysis of Legalism," Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. 116 (April/June 1963).
11. David Chilton, The Great Tribulation (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1987); Chilton, The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1987).
12. Dennis Prager, "Homosexuality, the Bible, and us -- a Jewish Perspective," The Public Interest (Summer 1993), p. 61.
13. Ibid., p. 63.
14. David Greenberg, The Construction of Homosexuality (University of Chicago Press, 1988), cited in ibid., p. 64.
15. Herman Dinsmore, All the News That Fits (New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House, 1969). Dinsmore was the editor of the international edition of the Times, 1951-60. His book's title comes from the words on the masthead of the Times: "All the News That's Fit to Print." The word "liberal" in the United States has meant "statist" since the late nineteenth century. It meant the opposite prior to the 1890's. The transition can be dated: the 1896 Presidential campaign of Presbyterian fundamentalist and populist William Jennings Bryan.
16. "The good, gray lady."
17. Don Feder, "Literary limits on the right side," Washington Times (Sept. 6, 1993), p. F4.
18. Socrates, in the Symposium, praised the love between adult males and adolescent boys as the highest form of love, i.e., the love extended not toward very young boys "but intelligent beings whose reason is beginning to be developed, much about the time at which their beards begin to grow." This true love is demonstrated by older men's faithfulness to their adolescent lovers as the young men mature into adulthood. Socrates insisted that "the love of young boys should be forbidden by law, because their future is uncertain; they may turn out good or bad, either in body or soul, and much noble enthusiasm may be thrown away upon them; . . ." That is, adult male lovers may waste their emotions on such youths; this should be prohibited by law. Nevertheless, there should be no laws against pederasty between older men and adolescents, "for surely nothing that is decorously and lawfully done can justly be censured." He praised the laws of Elis and Boetia that governed relations among post-pubescent males, where "the law is simply in favour of these connexions, and no one, whether young or old, has anything to say to their discredit; . . ." He disparaged the laws in Ionia "and other places, and generally in countries which are subject to the barbarians, [where] the custom is held to be dishonourable. . . ." Hostility to man-adolescent homosexuality is regarded in such barbarous societies -- Israel was one such society -- as threatening to political tyranny. Pederasty fosters attachments, Socrates said, that are inimical to tyranny. "And, therefore, the ill-repute into which these attachments have fallen is to be ascribed to the evil condition of those who make them to be ill-reputed; that is to say, to the self-seeking of the governors and the cowardice of the governed; . . ." Plato, Symposium, sections 181-82, in The Dialogues of Plato, translated by Benjamin Jowett, 2 vols. (New York: Random House, [1892] 1937), I, pp. 309-10. Aristotle was somewhat less tolerant: he objected to homosexuality between older and younger men, though not between adult males generally, so long as they were not related by kinship ties. These limited objections, Barker argues, depended on "contemporary Greek notions and practices. . . ." Ernest Barker (ed.), The Politics of Aristotle (New York: Oxford University Press, [1946] 1958), p. 46n. Comment on 1262a.
19. Greg L. Bahnsen, No Other Standard: Theonomy and Its Critics (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1991).
20. John S. Feinberg and Paul D. Feinberg, Ethics for a Brave New World (Westchester, Illinois: Crossway, 1993), p. 33.
21. On Hunt's pietism, see Gary DeMar and Peter Leithart, The Reduction of Christianity: A Biblical Response to Dave Hunt (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1988).
22. Feinbergs, Ethics, p. 36.
23. Theocracy is defined as "God rules."
24. Ibid., p. 37.
25. Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989).
26. Feinbergs, Ethics, p. 37.
27. Robert G. Hoerber, "Minors and Majors," Christian News (Oct. 4, 1993), p. 19.
28. Feinbergs, Ethics, p. 37.
29. Ibid., p. 39.
30. Idem.
31. H. Wayne House and Thomas D. Ice, Dominion Theology: Blessing or Curse? (Portland, Oregon: Multnomah Press, 1988), p. 130.
32. Feinbergs, Ethics, p. 39.
33. Ibid., p. 34.
34. Chalcedon Report (July 1, 1970).
35. David F. Wells, No Place for Truth; or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1993).
36. This is why there is occasional repetition in subsequent chapters. Few commentaries ever get read cover to cover.
37. They may have occupations. These jobs are rarely their callings. I define a person's calling as follows: "The most important lifetime service that he can render to God in which he would be most difficult to replace."
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